Group 'Trapt' by friendship growing up in California

March 31, 2006|TOM CONWAY Tribune Correspondent

Trapt singer-guitarist Chris Brown and bassist Peter Charell have been friends since grade school, when they played Little League together. Like many boys in the mid '90s, they were captivated by the new wave of metal bands -- Korn, The Deftones and 311 -- of that time. Unlike most of those boys, the duo started a band that ended up playing the same stages as their music idols. While still in high school, the band gained a large following as they tore up local haunts in their hometown of Los Gatos, Calif. With the addition of guitarist Simon Ormandy in 1997, the group recorded an independent CD. Within a year, Trapt was opening for bands such as Papa Roach and Dredg. Even with emerging success, Brown and Ormandy enrolled in the University of California-Santa Barbara, and Charell attended college hundreds of miles away at the University of California-Santa Cruz. Despite the distance, the band managed to get together regularly to rehearse and record. "We all went to college, and we made another CD," Charell says. "We started getting attention, and it all blew up." After a 2000 appearance at Los Angeles's legendary Troubadour club, a few record labels approached the group. Immortal Records, a label run by the like-minded alternative metal band Incubus, seemed interested in working with Trapt, and talks of a deal were in the works, but Immortal dropped the band after eight weeks for, ironically, "not sounding enough like Incubus." The group's members decided to get serious about their music career and all dropped out of college and moved to Los Angeles. Around that time, Trapt let go of its original drummer and hired Seattle native Aaron "Monty" Montgomery. Within nine months, Trapt signed a deal with Warner Bros. Records. Trapt released a self-titled debut CD in 2002, and it went on to sell nearly 2 million copies. The breakthrough hit single "Headstrong" earned the group two Billboard Music Awards for Best Modern Rock Track and Best Rock Track of 2003. Last fall, Trapt released its second CD, "Someone In Control." Lyrically, the CD looks at control problems that people experience in everyday relationships. "It is about people and how they have issues with control," Charell says. "Everyone thinks that they are in control and everything. It's like, at the end of the day, are they really in control of themselves, as their own person? Are they in control of their own emotions, feelings or whatever?" Having grown up in the conservative suburban town of Los Gatos, the themes of alienation and feeling, well, um, trapped, have imbued Trapt's music from the beginning. Charell says that the subject matter of control, or lack thereof, is something that everyone, not just disaffected youth, can relate to. "I think that anyone can really connect with it," he says. "Definitely, a lot of older people have that type of issue. They have an issue, or deal with someone like that." Charell says that it is difficult to find a label for Trapt's music. "For the most part, we are just a rock band," he says. "I wouldn't say that we are a metal band, or an alternative band, or whatever. Hard rock is a good term." Modern rock radio is filled with hundreds of hard rock bands, but Charell says he believes that the Trapt sound is unique. "We have got good riffs," he says. "At the same time, we can be heavy, but melodic. I am sure a lot of bands fit that same description, but we are just trying to do it a little different."